The Making of the Beautiful--The Life Story of Annie Johnson Flint

60 Pages·2015·1.58 MB·English

1111111111111111111111u1•111u11111•u11u1t11u11111111111111111110#.�:t.!'•111111111111111111111111u1111u1111111111111
•• ••
THE MAKING
11u11111111111111111111Qf THC•11111111111111111u1111
BEAUTIFUL
The Life Story of
ANN IE
JOHNSON
F L I NT
•
By Rowland V. Bingham, D.D.
· Editor The Evongelicol Christion
This Literature Provided By:
The Middletown Bible Church
349 East St., Middletown, CT 06457
www.middletownbiblechurch.org
EVANGELJCAL PUBLISHERS
366 BAY STREET, TORONTO, CANADA
•• ••
•1111111111111111111111111111111111111u1111111111111111111u11111111111u11111111,11111111111111111111111111111uuu111
Amm.ie Joh.n§on. Hillll11:
A foreword
n
F you ever had the privilege of calling upon Annie
I Johnson Flint, you have riot forgotten her hands.
Anyone who ever saw them, and who had read any of
her poems in manuscript, must have marvelled at the
clear and beautiful writing which her painfully distorted
hands were able to produce.
Those instruments of expression which most of us
can use so freely, were carefully trained to do their
manual work with flne restraint and regularity, and
perfect legibility.
But thil? ability to use her physical disabilities far
more blessedly than so many of us use our abilities, was
seen typically. but not chiefly in such control. It was
revealed far more deeply than that in the outpouring
of a courageous, chastened, and God-given spirit of
glad-hearted service in the name of the Lord whom she
loved, and by whose grace her gifts were brought to
·
such abundant fruition.
Annie Johnson Flint's poems were not simply the
unskilled utterances of a devout spirit. They disclose
by their gracious art, the hand of the true poet who
knows that religious verse-writing at its best requires
not only a consecrated insight, but lest the message be
halted and perhaps lost, a due regard for the most
exacting canons in the use of rich and fitting words,
musical rhythm, and correct verse forms. Hard work
very often lies back of seemingly spontaneous utter­
ances in which these principles of verse writing are
Five
followed. Miss Flint was one of the few writers of
religious poems in whose work one recognizes in the
very ease of it, the hand of the careful artist. Th1:;re
was no distortion in that inward instrument of conse­
crated expression.
One day a visitor stepped from Miss Flint's sitting
room· into the sleeping room to secure a certain reprint
of a poem for Miss Flint, who was seated in her wheeled
chair. A glance at the bed in that room was revealing.
Nine soft pillows were carefully arranged on the bed
for use in protecting the exquisitely sensitive,_ pain­
smitten body from the normal contact of the hed­
clothing, so distressing it was for her to recline in the
hope of rest at night.
And it was this most sensitive sufferer who, out of
her keen experiences of pain, prepared so many poem•
pillows for the weary, the suffering, the discouraged in
body, mind and spirit.
The message of her life is found in just such
episodes, and just such lovely, heartening, deeply
spiritual poems as are included in this booklet. Here is
an exhibit of what God can do with a life so hound and
yet so gloriously free, in a ministry tarely granted to
any dweller in our needy world.
PHILIP E. HOWARD.
President of 'The Sunday School 'Times Company,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Si;1;
The f oregleam
.. .. ..
• •
GJ[
HIS life at best would have been garbed
in drab or grey but for the touch of God.
Its welJ-nigh forty years spent as a "shut-in"
within the compass of four walls, with the occa­
sional break of an excursion in an invalid chair,
would only hav� attained to one color. And any
expression of sound would have been in mono�
tone. In one of her poems she did liken herself
to the fern in the flower kingdom, intended with
its living green to brighten the shade of the
forest. But the highest point her poetic genius
could have reached in this realm, would have
bestowed on her only a crown of "maidenhair."
But the touch of the Almighty did something
more than that for this one : even more than
realize the goal of her water-lily song which
pictures "The Soul" as climbing from the mud
and ooze of the underworld until its whit.e and
yellow burst into bloom on the water's brim.
We think her life-story is best introduced, as
it was surely characterized, by her lovely poem,
"The Making of the Beautiful", for God took
this life in its colourless shade and sorrow, and
touched it with all the hues of the rainbow. And
then He made its monotony burst into tones
whose harmonies have blessed the world in
their blending of the highest and deepest notes
of human experience;
"The Making of the Beautiful" gives her
early impressions and response to the touch of
the Master Hand.
Seven
The Malldng of due Beantifull
EADOW and vale and mountain,
M Ocean and lake and wood,-
God looked on the fruit of His labor
And saw that His work was good;
And yet was there something lacking
In the world that He had made,
Something to brighten the greenness,
Something to lighten the shade.·
He took a shred of the rainbow,
A bit of the sunshine's gold,
The colors of all the jewels
The mines of earth enfold,
A piece of the mist of evening
With the sunset woven through,
A scrap of the sky at noonday,
A clear, unclouded blue;
Of these He fashioned the flowers,
And some were red, like the rose,
And some were a lovely azure,
And some were pale as the snows;
Some, shaped like a fairy chalice
The perfumed honey to hold,
And some were stars of silver,
And some were flakes of gold.
They flashed in the gloom' of the forests,
They clung to the boughs of the trees,
They hid in the grass of the meadows,
They drifted away on the breeze,
They fell in the clefts of the canyons
And high on the mountains bare,
Where never an eye should see them
Save His Who had made them fair.
' * * * * * * * *
Eight
But still there was something wanting,
His labor was not yet done;
lie gathered more of the colors
Of rainbow and sky and sun,
And now unto these He added
The music of sea and land,
The tune of the rippling river,
The splash of the waves on the sand,
The raindrops' lilting measure,
The pine tree's crooning sigh,
The aspen's lisping murmur,
The wind's low lullaby,
Faint fluting of angel voices
From heavenly courts afar,
And the softest, dreamiest echoes
Of the song of the morning star.
Then deftly His fingers moulded
The strong and the delicate things
Instinct with the joy and the beauty
Of song and of soaring wings;
Nightingale, heron and seagull,
·
Bobolink, lark-and then,
I think that He smiled a little
As He tilted the tail of the wren,
As He made the owl's face solemn
And twisted the blue jay's crest,
As He bent the beak of the parrot
And smoothed the oriole's vest,
As He burnished the crow's jet plumage
And the robin's breast of red;
"In the cold of the northern springtime
The children will love it," He said.
So some were quaint and cunning,
And some were only fail-,
And some He gave a song to,
And lo, the birds of the air.
And the snippets of things left over,
He tossed out under the skies,
Where, falling, fluttering, flying,
Behold, they were butterflies!
]\{int:
A Prose Pict1lllre
of a Poet
Written by Herself
••
0
NL Y one prose production of Annie
Johnson Flint is extant. Just once
she turned from the poet's muse, and it
is not strange that even then instead of
writing common prose her pen ran from
poetry to allegory.
Outside of Bunyan's immortal work,
we wonder whether a sweeter picture in
allegorical form has ever been drawn. It
presents in a fascinating manner a
spiritual interpretration of her own life,
and breathes the same air of faith and
love, and confidence in the guidance and
goodness of God that marked all she
wrote.
It was found among her papers in her
own handwriting, with corrections as she
had made them, ere laying down her pen.
Before presenting her life story it makes a
fitting Autobiography in Allegory of
·
Annie Johnson Flint.
'fen
The Life in AUegorg
"THAT I MIGHT BE LIKE UNTO HIM"
'J:l
A ND it came to pass, as I travelled along the
�Highway of Life, that I saw in the distance, far
ahead, a mountain, and on it One standing. upon whose
face rested a divine compassion for the grief of the
world.
His raiment was white and glittering, and in His
hand was a cross. And He called unto the sons of
men, saying "Come! Come! Who will take up his cross
and follow me, that he may be like unto me, and that I
may seat him at my right hand and share with him things
glorious and beautiful beyond the dreams of earth and
·
the imaginings of men?"
And I said. "What is my cross, that I may take it
up?"
And a Voice answered, "There are many crosses,
and thine shall be given thee in good time."
And I said, "What will bring me near to Thee and .
make me most like Thee 7"
And the Voice replied, "There are many angels with
whom thou canst walk; but see that they lead thee only
toward me, and never away from me, for some there
be that will . cause thee to forget me."
And I said, "What angel shall be given me?" And
I felt a hand laid upon mine, and saw beside me
Eleven
'THE MAKING OF 'THE BEAUTIFUL
"'0- "'0- "'0- "'0- "'0- "'0- "'0- "'0- "'0- "'0- "'0- "'0- "'0- "'0- "'0- "'0-
one with a smiling face, who said, "Walk with me: I am
the Angel of Joy,"
Then all my life grew bright. and wealth was mine,
and many pleasures, and friends crowded around me,
and Love crowned me, and I knew no care.
But suddenly I heard the Voice, and it sounded faint
and far�off, and it said, "Alas! Thou art not coming
toward me." And I fell upon my knees, crying, "Oh,
forgive me that I could forget Theel Take away the
angel. since he leads me not unto Thee."
Then the world grew dark and I heard a low voice
beside �e saying, "Come with me: I am the Angel of
.
Sorrow.
Then he took my hand in his, and I went with him,
weeping. But now there were no friends around me,
and pleasure palled upon me, and my heart was very
sad. And as I went I saw that the Vision grew brighter,
and I perceived that I was no longer walking away
from it.
But my soul was exceeding sorrowful. and I looked
back often, and saw in memory the joys I had once
known, until the tears blinded me, and I stumbled con#
tinually, for the path was rough, and it had begun to
lead upward.
Then I heard the Voice again, and it said, "Look not
back; regret not the past; I will send thee another angel
who will help thee to forget the things that are behind."
Then the Sorrowful Angel vanished, and in his place
stood one whose face was cheerful. and he said, "Come!
let us he up and doing; I am the Angel of Work."
'Twelve